bi 
(oe) 


Wn) 
zal 
red 
= 
0 
S 
~ 
Re 
E 
2 
E 
CL 
< 
aa 


JONES 


PHILIP L. 


Ki Restatement 
of 
Baptist Principles 


= 4+ 


AA Restatement 
of 
Baptist Principles 


By 
Philip L. Jones 


Autbor of 
** The Divine Fatberbood’’ 


Third Edition 


a 


The Griffith & Rowland Press 
Pbiladelpbia 
Boston Chicago St, Louis 
Toronto, Can. 


ee iy 
4 ‘ ) ae - be: 
_ 
Copyright 1909 by © 
A, J. ROWLAND, Secreta 


Special Mote 


In accordance with the vote of the Publication 
Committee, Dr. Wayland Hoyt prepared the fol- 
lowing special note: The Rev. Philip L. Jones, 
D. D., has been connected with the Book Depart- 
ment of the American Baptist Publication Society 
for twenty years, and Book Editor for sixteen. 
No man ever did duty more lovingly, thoroughly, 
admirably. How natural is it that also authorship 
should bloom out of such service. And here is the 
flower—this book. It is a clear, concise, every 
way fine statement of the structural Baptist princi- 
ples. It is a book, just now in these everywhere 
questioning times, much needed. I heartily advise 
both its reading and the widespreading of the 
book by those who read. No wonder that the 
Publication Committee of the Society, in accept- 
ing the MS of this book, tendered its special con- 
gratulations to Doctor Jones, both for his long- 
standing industry as Book Editor, and for such 
fair issue, as is this book, from his own heart 
and brain. 


WAYLAND Hoyt, 
PHILADELPHIA, February 19, 1909. 


Foreword 


In denominating the principles of the following 
discussion as those of Baptists, it is not intended 
to intimate that they are now held exclusively by 
them. It is still true of some, as for example, the 
ordinances and their symbolism, and the supreme 
headship of Jesus Christ. And even where the 
holding of these principles, on the part of Bap- 
tists, is in common with that of other denomina- 
tions, the loyalty of the former is a little closer 
and more consistent than that of the latter. It is 
sufficient to instance the authority of Scripture 
and the separation of Church and State. Because 
of this then, as well as because of their early and 
sole espousal of them, we are justified in calling 
them principles of Baptists; indeed, we should not 
be far wrong if we called them distinctively such. 

But why restate them? Are there not already 
statements of them sufficient in number? Per- 
haps. But it is sometimes necessary to restate an 
axiom. There are always some whom current 
statements do not reach and whose attention a 

7 


eee 


new voice may arrest. Moreover, fresh con- 
stituencies are constantly arising with the advent 
of new masses of young people; while changing 
conceptions of the old thought demand new forms 
in which it shall be embodied. For these reasons, 
therefore, this little brochure is sent forth, and it 
is fervently hoped that the cause of truth and the 
interests of the Lord’s kingdom may be furthered 
thereby. 


PHILADELPHIA, February 1, 1909. De Me Ie 


Table of Contents 


CHAPTER Pace 
I. THe Sout’s Direct RELATION To GOD........... II 
II. FairH THE Key TO THE KINGDOM............... 21 
III. Jesus Curist’s SUPREME HEADSHIP............. 31 
TV. THe CuurcuH A SPIRITUAL DEMOCRACY.......... 41 
V. THE ORDINANCES OF THE CHURCH AND THEIR 
SWATROLEGID \ yatcrsaiawietas ee cine eavee nist cisterna are, AtAD 
VI. OBEDIENCE To JESUS CHRIST, THE TEST oF D1s- 
GIPEESHIP)..555 fo0 se Deal ote ae cere deans ISO 
VII. THe AgpsoLuTE SEVERANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE 67 
VIII. Inpivipuat FREEpoM ESSENTIAL TO PROGRESS.... 79 
IX. Love, Not Law, THE BinpinG Factor........... 93 


X. A ReEDEMPTIVE SERVICE THE CHURCH’S SUPREME 


EON gd. 5aseistevoh oie os Sinise aisha wnat wislale nate bate Sassen OS 


1 


The Soul’s Direct Relation to God 


When I consider Thy heavens, the works of thy fingers, 

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 

And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 

For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 

And crownest him with glory and honor. 

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy 
hands ; 

Thou hast put all things under his feet. 


—Psalm 8: 3-6. 


A\T the basis of all being lies the individ- 
ual. In matter we come in the final 


pidfeees®) analysis to the atom or more recently 
to the electron. In natural history back through 
genera and species we go until we find the primi- 
tive parent. In human history, whatever line we 
traverse, we cannot stop before we reach the in- 
dividual. The unit everywhere begins the arith- 
metic of God’s universe. 

In the spiritual realm this is no less true than 
elsewhere. It is the man, and not the nation, or 
tribe, or family with whom, in the closest scrutiny, 
God has to do. The question that came to Adam 
in that first inquest into moral action, Where art 
thou? is the question that in some form has been 
propounded throughout the ages. It is the human 
soul that must stand face to face with God. That 
human method at times has seemed to act other- 
wise does not set aside this supreme principle. 
Israelitish polity might include Achan’s family 
in his punishment, but it was Achan alone who 
13 


[14] Baptist Principles 


was guilty of the sin. The burden of the stolen 
wedge of gold and the goodly garment was his 
and only his. The stones of the executioners 
might fall upon all alike, but God saw in him 
alone the culprit. Down through human history 
the student may discover many similar instances, 
but always and everywhere God has separated the 
mass and caused each to stand alone. Ezekiel was 
right for the whole sweep of human history, “ the 
soul that sinneth it shall die.’’ Not the nation, 
the tribe, the family, but the soul, it shall die. 
These are involved with it, but the divine tribunal 
does not rest until it, and it, and it are reached 
and the whole mass is judged. 

In the bestowment of blessing, as in the dis- 
tribution of blame, the same analysis is employed 
and the same result is reached. The exigencies of 
theological mechanicians may at times have de- 
manded the substitution of the household for the 
units of the same, and the federal covenant may 
have been thrust in to diminish the necessity or 
importance of the individual response, but the 
principle has only been vitiated; it has not been 
repealed. Well does Dr. E. Y. Mullins say: 
“Primarily the religious relation is a relation 
between God and the individual man. Religious 


Direct Relation [15] 


privilege and religious duty subsist between men 
and God, in the first instance, in their capacity 
as individuals, and only secondarily in their so- 
cial relations. On the social side of their religious 
life there is nothing which can properly destroy 
the freedom of access which all men have to 
God, or in any way mar that fellowship.” * The 
definition of “social relations”’ may be of the 
widest character, taking in those that are eccle- 
siastical or otherwise, and the truth of the af- 
firmation remains the same. No human device, 
however skilfully formed, can destroy the bond 
God has established, nor bind together that which 
he has determined to stand alone. 

All through the Bible, in its deeper spiritual 
meaning, this fact of individuality stands forth 
with a clearness no sophistry can dim. It is Moses 
the man God calls from his herds, and David from 
his flocks, and Isaiah amid the glories of the tem- 
ple vision. It was Peter and Matthew and John 
Jesus summoned from publican’s stand and fisher- 
man’s boat, and later Saul, alone, amid the blind- 
ing light of the heavenly vision, to whom he 
showed how hard it was to kick against the pricks. 
Everywhere it is to him who believeth, and not to 


1“ Axioms. of Religion,’ p. 93. 


[16] Baptist Principles 


them to whom is shown the salvation of God. 
_ Moreover, it is to Jim and not to them the varied 
rewards will be given contained in the promises 
of the angel of the seven churches. We do not 
walk in serried ranks when we come before God, 
whether for condemnation or acquittal. Each for 
himself and herself must come to the fountain of 
grace and dip and drink and live. And each for 
himself must feel the parched lips and impover- 
ished soul inevitably resulting from the refusal of 
the refreshing draught. “For this is the cove- 
nant that I will make with the house of Israel 

, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their 
inward parts and in their hearts will I write it. 
. . And they shall teach no more every man his 
neighbor and every man his brother saying, Know 
the Lord, for they shall all know me from the 
least to the greatest.’’* It is not upon the heart 
of the mass that the divine stylus does its work, 
but upon the heart of the man. 

This doctrine of the individual relationship of 
the soul to God has always and everywhere been 
insisted upon by Baptists. Indeed, no doctrine 
has been, nor is, more Baptistic than this. No 
edict of the State, no ordinance of the Church, no 


tJer. 31 2 33, 34. 


Direct Relation [17] 


act of the ecclesiastic, no function of the priest, 
will the one imbued with Baptist doctrine permit 
to come between himself and his Maker. He says, 
with no one and no thing to intervene, “ my 
Father,” and with filial affection in his heart he 
enters his presence. He sings, 


I know his courts; I’ll enter in 
Whatever may oppose. 


He never has surrendered, he never will sur- 
render this priceless gift of the soul’s competency 
in its dealings with God. Each man is a priest in 
his own inherent right; each woman is a priestess 
and can gain access to Him who has said “all 
souls are mine.” No intercession of saints is 
needed; no pleading of Mary, whom Rome has 
elevated to a position no scripture warrants; no 
placating ministry of the divine Lord himself is 
demanded. The man, the individual, goes for 
himself. True, our Lord ever liveth to make in- 
tercession for us. But it is not the intercession 
of one who must appease, but that of the one who 
ever stands ready to help. It is the intercession 
of the trellis for the vine which it lifts into the 
fructifying sunlight; it is the intercession of the 
parent and instructor for the child leading it 

B 


[18] Baptist Principles 


ever onward to the larger, fuller life lying beyond 
the attained horizon. 

At a great cost too, Baptists have held and 
advocated this doctrine. Question history and it 
will tell us most eloquently of this. It was be- 
cause of their adherence to this principle that 
many of the so-called Anabaptists suffered in 
Germany. For this Felix Mantz and Conrad 
Griebel yielded up their lives in Switzerland, and 
Balthasar Hubmaier, clear-visioned far beyond 
his age, in Bohemia. It was because of this that 
persecution in its cruellest form visited many a 
saint in England, and for this that Roger Wil- 
liams was banished from Massachusetts, and 
Obadiah Holmes whipped, and men, of whom 
their day was not worthy, fined and imprisoned in 
Virginia. The world has been slow in learning 
the essentialness and worth of this individual soul- 
responsibility to God alone, and Baptists have 
been its teachers. Were they to become extinct, 
and had they left nothing else as their share in 
writing the world’s history, for this their being — 
would have been worth while. 

That this doctrine finds support in modern phi- 
losophy is not without moment. According to 
that, God is not outside of his works ruling the 


Direct Relation [19] 


world from some far-off throne, but in them filling 
them with his life. Hence, it is not Christian 
alone, but scientific as well, when Paul speaks of 
“Christ formed in you the hope of glory.” 
Tennyson * has expressed the thought no less 
than Paul: 
Speak to Him thou, for he hears, and 
Spirit with spirit can meet; 


Closer is he than breathing, and nearer 
Than hands and feet. 


And it is the man who is the recipient thus of the 
divine touch and the vehicle of the divine thought. 

It is corroborative of the essential and struc- 
tural nature of this doctrine that men, whose lives 
in the main have been radically divergent there- 
from, have been compelled to bear testimony to 
its truth. No man left a deeper impress on the 
ecclesiastical history of the nineteenth century 
than did Cardinal Newman. No man during that 
period, either, influenced men more profoundly 
than he in the direction of yielding up their spirit- 
ual destiny to the control of an extra-individual 
authority ; for none more than he swung the Eng- 
lish Church toward Rome. And yet, even he, in 
view of the imperial demands of his soul in its 


1“ The Higher Pantheism.” 


[20] Baptist Principles 


relations to God could say: “I rested in the 
thought of two, and two only, absolute and 
luminously self-evident beings, myself and my 
Creator!’’* On this his most recent biographer, 
Professor Sarolea comments: “It is the soul 
which must decide in the last resort. It does not 
behove the priest to obtrude his part in the mysti- 
cal drama in which have been only two dramatis 
personae—God and Conscience.” ? 

It is something to be prized then, this doctrine 
of the soul’s individual relation to God. It is some- 
thing for which to thank profoundly our Baptist 
progenitors, and something to cherish tenaciously 
and sacredly for those who are to come after us. 


1“ Apologia,” p. 4. 2“ Cardinal Newman,” p. 147. 


12 


Faith the Key to the kingdom 


And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, 


even our faith. —1 John 5: 4. 


And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if 
I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and 
Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued king- 
doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped 
the mouths of lions ... waxed mighty in war, turned to 


flight armies of aliens. —Hebrews 11 : 32-34. 


II 


> epg were well to spend a few moments in 
Ee 224 definition as a preparation for the dis- 
nese cussion of this chapter. What is this 
kingdom of which we think, and what is the faith 
which forms the roadway thereto? It has been 
said in some quarters, and still is, that the king- 
dom of our Lord has not yet been established. 
He came proclaiming its nearness and proffering 
it to the Jews, and they rejected it. It was there- 
fore withdrawn and the church was instituted to 
take its place. This substitution will continue 
until with it he shall have accomplished his pur- 
pose, and then by his personal presence he will 
supersede it by his kingdom as, because of the 
Jews’ rejection, the church has superseded it. 

Manifestly to most this is wrong. It would 
seem to be a supposition made to support a theory. 
Though good men have held and hold it, it is 
difficult to see how a careful student of the situa- 
tion can come to any such conclusion. Careful 
scrutiny of the New Testament must decide 
23 


[24] Baptist Principles 


against it. Continually our Lord proclaimed its 
imminence. Continually he spoke in terms of the 
kingdom. Unmistakably he declared to those 
who listened on one occasion “the kingdom of 
heaven is within you,” or among you. He never 
withdrew it. Of the church, as it exists, he said 
little; of the kingdom he knew everything. To 
Nicodemus he said, “ Except ye be born from 
above ye cannot see the kingdom of God.” The 
converse of the statement is “ If ye be born from 
above ye shall both see and enter the kingdom.” 
Nicodemus was born from above, and did see and 
did enter, as did all who heard the voice of Jesus 
and followed him, as men and women have been 
doing throughout the centuries, as they are doing 
to-day. 

For, consider what this kingdom is. The apos- 
tle has defined it:| “ The kingdom of God is not 
eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost.”* These are the 
‘ spiritual heritage of all who may rightly count 
themselves Christ’s disciples. It is not then—this 
kingdom—an institution or an organization. It is 
a condition, an attitude, a state, a mental and 
ethical and spiritual atmosphere of which all who 


1Rom. 14: 17. 


faith the key [25} 


are truly Christ’s must breathe. It is biological, 
not theological. The church is not the kingdom 
though, as it is true, it is a part of the kingdom. 
It is of it but not it. Some are in the one who 
have not yet, with the spiritual vision, seen the 
other. To none in the kingdom will Jesus ever 
say, “I never knew you”’; to some in the church 
it is quite conceivable that he may. In this king- 
dom the individuality of the soul’s relationship to 
God manifests itself, and its competency is assured. 
- The key now to this kingdom we have said is 
faith. What is it? How shall we take its meas- 
ure? How shall we define it? It differs from 
_ belief. It includes that but it is more than that. 
The demons may believe but they have not faith. 
Evil men may subscribe to the creed that under- 
lies belief, but be total strangers to the princi- 
ple that vitalizes faith. It is assent but it is con- 
sent likewise. Dr. E. G. Robinson used to say, it 
is the assent of the will and the consent of the 
heart. It is willingness to let Jesus Christ save. 
It is the appropriation on the part of the individ- 
ual soul of all the privileges and bestowments 
flowing from the treasury of divine grace. It is 
the soul’s response to the beckoning that comes 
from above. Dr. E. Y. Mullins puts it in this 


[26] Baptist Principles 


way: “It is the response of the entire spiritual 
nature of man aroused in all its parts to the 
approach of God the Father through the reveal- 
ing Christ, constituting men members of his 
kingdom through his word.” * 

Nor is this faith, at least not primarily and 
wholly, under the soul's control. __One cannot will 
to have faith, as he can will to perform any ordi- 
nary outward act. “ By grace have ye been saved 
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the 
gift of God.” This has a wider meaning than 
that faith alone is the gift of God, but it also 
means that. One can put himself in the attitude 
that shall be hospitable to the reception of this 
faith; he can use the means that are friendly 
thereto, but he cannot generate it. Wrong, there- 
fore, is it to say, “‘ Faith is an act of volition,” ? 
as the most recent biographer of Cardinal New- 
man does. Will is not quiescent, but no man can 
will himself into the possession of that faith which 
is the key to the kingdom. of God. He cannot act 
as | though | he had it, and have it. Faith which 
leads to union with God cannot be gotten in this 
way. A man may have its countersign, he may be 


1“ Axioms of Religion,” p. 34. 
2“ Cardinal Newman,” p. 102. 


¥ y. 


Faith the key [27] 


able to pronounce its shibboleths; but if he zs not 

he has not. He might as well declare himself one 

of the fellowship of music or art while ignorant 

of their basic principles. Faith as thus conceived 

is a spiritual condition, and a condition arising 

from the divine down-reaching to the individual 
, soul. 

Now, as we have said, this is the key to the 
kingdom. Everywhere in the New Testament the 
petitioner for entrance thereto is met with a de- 
mand for its existence. Wouldest thou become a 
citizen therein? Well, then believe, have faith 
and thou mayest. There is no other way. Noth- 
ing can take its place. Birth, position—as the 
rabbi found in his conversation with Jesus— 
cannot set aside its necessity. No ordinance, no 
priestly thaumaturgy can be permitted for a single 
moment to set its imperial claims at naught. 


He who would the Father seek, 
Must seek him, Lord, through thee. 


And the only all-sufficient guarantee of finding is 
faith. As the wicket gate in Bunyan’s dream was 
the only means of reaching the interpreter’s house, 
so faith alone gives ingress to the kingdom of 
God. 


[28] Baptist Principles 


This Baptists have so insistently and so con- 
sistently held that it might legitimately be 
called one of their distinctive doctrines. Others 
claim to be advocates of its essentialness, but 
none so emphatically and exclusively as they. 
They have therefore inexorably opposed infant 
baptism, which those others have adopted. The 
infant cannot have faith they have said. He can- 
not therefore enter the kingdom as the Founder of 
that kingdom has prescribed. An ordinance, a 
rite, administered with never so much ceremony 
and backed by never so much ecclesiastical author- 
ity, cannot be permitted to take the place of the 
soul’s individual act before God. At the cost of 
incalculable suffering, Baptists have maintained 
this position. They must maintain it or surren- 
der the charter of their existence. 

Men are fond sometimes of conjecturing what 
would have been in the history of the world if 
other principles had prevailed than those which 
obtained, and another course had been followed 
than that which has been pursued. Had Eastern 
influences, rather than Western, been regarded in 
the formation of the New Testament canon, and 
in the construction of the Nicene Creed and its 
attendant legislation, the history of the church 


Faitb the ey [29] 


would have been different, these are sometimes 
fond of saying. If Martin Luther had been logi- 
cal and followed the principles of his spiritual 
revolt to their legitimate conclusion, as his con- 
temporaries the Swiss Baptists sought t to do, the 
complexion of the great Reformation would have 
‘ been vastly other than it was, and the subsequent 
history of Europe would have been utterly 
changed. Well, suppose this Baptist principle of 
faith the key to the kingdom had everywhere 
been regnant; how different, we may feel, the ca- 
reer of the church would have been. Formal 
Christianity, as an institution, would have been 
unknown. The travesty—and the term is not too 
severe—of infant baptism would have been un- 
heard of. The evils of Church and State in their 
illicit union could not have existed. The fires of 
persecution would have remained unlighted, and 
many a chapter of human history, inflicting untold 
wounds on the cause of religion, and bringing the 
blush of shame to the cheek of every lover of his 
kind, would have remained unwritten. This, in 
the unfolding of the divine purposes, seemingly 
could not be. But to the honor of the Baptists 
it must be recorded that they did what they could 
to have it so. They failed in that, but they have 


[30] Baptist Principles 


succeeded in preserving intact one of the funda- 
mental principles of the kingdom of God—that 
faith is the key, and the only key thereto. Others 
may attempt the task of effecting an entrance, but 
the wards of the lock will move and the door will 
open only in response to it. 


WAT 


Jesus Christ’s Supreme Headsbip 


Strong Son of God, immortal love, 
Whom we that have not seen thy face 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove. 


Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood thou; 

Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
Our wills are ours to make them thine. 


Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee; 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 


—Tennyson, “In Memoriam,’ Prologue. 


Til 


Pare|E. have spoken in the preceding chapters 
§| of the soul’s individuality in its rela- 

mses! tion to God, and of the kingdom into 
which faith qualifies it to effect an entrance. In 
this we want to consider Jesus Christ’s supreme 
headship in this kingdom of his grace. Every 
kingdom implies a king. Every government must 
have a ruler who represents its authority and exe- 
cutes its laws. Every realm has some one who 


embodies its supremacy. In art, in literature, in 
life, the principle is unyielding. In the spiritual 
arena we call the kingdom, it is no less so. Nay, 
itis much more so. In these lower realms we may 
demur and question the supremacy. In the king- 
dom of God we may not, if we would be citizens 
therein. 

This supremacy now is vested in Jesus Christ. 
It is not in king or priest or bishop. It is in him. 
Other thrones have attempted to take the place of 
his, and other scepters have sought substitution 
for his. But these have been usurpers, by what- 

c 33 


[34] Baptist Principles 
S| 


ever name called. They have no more inherent 
right than has ambition or selfish greed to take the 
place of love in the hearts of those who would be 
loyal subjects of his sway. “ Art thou a king 
then?” said Pilate to the marred prisoner of his 
judgment hall, “ Art thou a king?” “ Thou say- 
est that I am a king,” * was the firm and startling 
reply. “All power,” said this King a little later 
when he had earned the right to say it, “ All au- 
thority has been given unto me in heaven and on 
earth; go ye therefore, and make disciples of all 
the nations.” ? It was an imperial mandate ut- 
tered by an imperial Prince. “ Yet I have set 
my king upon my holy hill,” says Jehovah in the 
Second Psalm. It was not spoken primarily of 
Jesus, but it represents the fact concerning him. 
“ Christ alone is king in Zion,” * Doctor Mullins 
says. And again, “ Christ is Lord. The believer 
in Christ belongs to an absolute monarchy, the © 
most absolute indeed the world ever knew.” * 

It were well to dwell upon this a little from a 
scriptural viewpoint. ‘‘ Why call ye me Lord, 
Lord, and do not the things which I say?” *® “If 


1John 18: 37. 2 Matt. 28: 18, 19. 
3“ Axioms of Religion,” p. 272. *Ibid., p. 128. 
5 Luke 6: 46. 


Christ’s HHeadsbip [35] 


any man would come after me, let him deny him- 
self, and take up his cross, and follow me.” * “ In- 
asmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, 
even these least, ye did it unto me,”’* he declares 
shall be the verdict on that august day when the 
nations shall be gathered before his throne. 

The Epistles and the Apocalypse catch the 
thought and echo it in many an eloquent passage. 
Paul represents Him as humbling himself, be- 
coming of no reputation, and taking the form of 
a servant, and becoming “ obedient unto the death 
of the cross,” and so “ wherefore also God highly 
exalted him and gave unto him the name which 
is above every name; that in the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow ... and every tongue 
confess.” * Can, could, sovereignty be more su- 
preme than that? In the same attitude the writer 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews beholds him. To 
him he is on the throne at the right hand of God, 
“from henceforth expecting till his enemies be 
made the footstool of his feet.* In the Spirit on 
the Lord’s day the author of Revelation saw him, 
and his eyes were like flame, and his feet like 
burnished brass. And in his hand was the sword 


1 Mark 8: 34. 2 Matt. 25: go. 
Sip hnis tai hoy xin. *Heb. 10: 13. 


[36] Baptist Principles 


of authority and power, and he moved among the 
candlesticks in all the majesty of his kingliness.* 

And this kingship is based on the surest founda- 
tion. Napoleon in that oft-cited scene on St. 
Helena is reputed to have said: “ Alexander, 
Cesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded em- 
pires, but on what did we found them? Upon the 
sword. Jesus Christ founded his kingdom on 
love, and to this day millions would die for him.” ” 
Yes, it is upon love, and therefore it will endure. 
Yes, it is upon love, and therefore sometimes the 
name of Jesus is applauded while the mention of 
the church is hissed. Yes, it is upon love, and 
hence ever and anon in the history of mankind 
comes the cry, Back to Christ! Break through 
creeds, overleap edicts, disregard ecclesiastical 
authority; for he alone is king, since he alone is 
supreme lover. In the ‘‘ Mill on the Floss,” in her 
suggestive fashion, George Eliot tells the legend 
of St. Oggs. It runs something like this: A 
storm was resting on the river. In the midst 
of it a woman, withered and worn and in rags, 
with a child in her arms, asked of the group of 
boatmen to be rowed across. They demurred and 
bade her wait till the morning. “ But Ogg, son of 


1 Rey. 1: 14-16. 2 Schaff, ‘‘ Person of Christ,” p. 244. 


Cbrist’s HHeadsbip [37] 


Beorl, came up and said, ‘I will ferry thee across. 
It is enough that thy heart needs it.’ And he 
ferried her across. And when she was over, her 
tags turned to garments shining white, and a 
glory was about her, and she shed a light on the 
water like the moon in its brightness. And she 
said, “Ogg, son of Beorl, thou art blessed in that 
thou didst not question and wrangle with the 
heart’s need.’””* And so Jesus did not question 
and wrangle with the heart’s need, but gave him- 
self—gives himself—in love for it and therefore 
he shall reign supreme. 

Baptists have always held this doctrine of 
Christ’s supreme headship as one of their most 
precious spiritual possessions. It lies at the basis 
of their polity, and furnishes the keynote to their 
history. Side by side with its correlative, the 
individual relationship of the soul to God, it 
constitutes the prime factor in their religious life. 
This, more than any other tenet, gives them their 
distinctive character. As the harvest is determined 
by the seed, as the oak is enfolded in the acorn, so 
what Baptists are depends on this that they be- 
lieve. It is that which affixes to them their label 
in the ecclesiastical catalogue. It is not the form 


1“ Mill on the Floss,” chap. xii, p. 107. 


[38] Baptist Principles 


of an ordinance; it is not their view of the rela- 
tion one ordinance bears to another which makes 
them what they are, but this recognition on their 
part of Christ as king. Grant this to them, and all 
else follows as the stream from the fountain in 
which it has its birth. So completely is it an in- 
tegral part of their constitutional being that they 
alone, of all the Christian sects, may be said to 
hold it in its completeness. All claim to hold it, 
but by the direct and indirect authority they center 
elsewhere they so diminish and detract from it 
that their claim is not a valid one. The Romanist 
has his pope and his conclave; the Anglican his 
bishop and his convention; the Presbyterian his 
presbytery and his general assembly; and the 
Methodist his conference, and these in so many 
respects have so traversed the commands of Christ 
that they have rendered null his direct headship. 
This is said in no narrow spirit, but as an indis- 
putable historic fact. The mutilation of the bap- 
tismal sign, the fabricating of oppressive and com- 
plicated machinery, the transformation of what 
should be a spiritual body into a mixed multitude, 
and the blending of the two distinct spheres of 
Church and State, all have resulted directly or in- 
directly from the disregard of the instructions 


Cbhrist’s Headsbip [39] 


Jesus gave. So tenacious are Baptists in their 
view that this is so that they would surrender the 
doctrine of the Lordship of Christ only with the 
surrender of their denominational life. 

In two ways this lordship makes itself opera- 
tive. One is by means of the written word. In 
the Gospels and Epistles Jesus has embodied his 
perpetual will. No sophistry as to the lack of an 
adequate interpreter has driven Baptists from 
this position. As the father speaks to the son in 
the will he leaves behind, so Jesus speaks to his 
people by his word. When he says “ Do this,” 
the command is taken at its face value. Modified 
views of verbal inspiration and as to absolute in- 
errancy have not materially diminished or weak- 
ened the authority vested therein. His word is 
still, as it has been, regarded as making wise unto 
salvation, and as laying down for those who will 
be teachable and obedient a sufficient guide in 
faith and practice. 

But there is another way in which Baptists 
have always believed that this lordship, this 
leadership of Christ, will and does make itself 
known. It is by direct communication of his 

will to the soul. In the secret recesses of the 
spirit’s life the divine speaks to it. “‘ The secret 


[40] Baptist Principles 


[or friendship] of the Lord is with them that fear 
him, and he will show them his covenant.” * Lit- 
erally, he will “ uncover the ear ” and will whisper 
into it his thoughts. Call it what one may, the in- 
ner light, the mystical sense, the influence of the 
Spirit, it is a fact the true spiritual adherent of Je- 
sus Christ will not surrender. Leading as it some- 
times has to absurdities and excess, he will still 
cling to it. The soul’s individual relationship de- 
mands it, human experience has again and again 
confirmed it, and he can do no other than hold to 
it. In these days the mystery of it need not repel. 
Auto-suggestion, telepathic communication—shall 
these be and Jesus not speak to his own? He can, 
he wiil; and Baptists have always believed it and 
sanctioned it. So in a sense they have formed 
their own canon; so each has builded his own 
creed; so for every one may be marked out the 
way of life. But come to him thus, or in the more 
formal embodiment, or in any way it may, the 
true disciple sings, as Jesus intimates his will, 
My gracious Lord, I own thy right 
To every service I can pay, 


And count it my supreme delight 
To hear thy dictates and obey. 


1Ps, 25: 14. 


Ww 


The Church a Spiritual Democracy 


For mankind are one in spirit and an instinct bears along, 

Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right 
and wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast 
frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibers feels the gush of joy and 
shame ; 

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 


—Lowell, “ The Present Crisis.” 


IV, 


a fa N the progress of our discussion we are 
3 222) now ready for a consideration of the 
i ! church. We have seen that the king- 
dacs and the church are different. The church is 
or may be of the kingdom. It is not that king- 
dom, neither in area nor in form. Being, as we 
have said, an attitude, a spiritual condition, rather 
than a concrete embodiment, the kingdom can 
be, as it is, much wider than the church. Nar- 
rower than the kingdom the church likewise is 
more formal, more palpable, more material. It 


has been compelled to organize, and it has organ- 
ized. It has established its polity, it has formu- 
lated its creeds, it has ordained its officers, it has 
prescribed its worship, it has projected its min- 
istries. And yet, different as the church is from 
the kingdom, when it has been true to the original 
and scriptural ideal, the key, “ faith,” which has 
admitted to the one, is the key that has unlocked 
the door of the other. To the questioner asking 
“May I become a member of the church?” the 
43 


os 


[44] Baptist Principles 


true answer has ever been, “If thou believest, 
thou mayest.” 

What then is this church of which we speak, 
and with which the world has so much to do, and 
of which it really knows so little? It is a com- 
pany of baptized believers, organized to proclaim 
Christ’s truth, to administer his ordinances, and 
to perpetuate his ministry. Its organization is 
mutual association; its ordinances, baptism and 
the Supper; its officers, pastors and deacons; and 
its binding creed, love to God and love to men. 
These elements of church organization are found 
in the New Testament, and beyond them there is 
no warrant for the intricate and elaborate ecclesi- 
astical machinery that has been devised, nor for 
the absolute human authority it has been sought to 
impose. The church to be true to its fundamental 
principles must be a democracy. The soul’s in- 
dividual relationship to God, the necessity of faith 
as a guide into the kingdom, and the priesthood 
and kingship of each believer, all demand the form 
of a democracy in which it shall stand before the 
world. There is no provision for bishop or pope 
to lord it over God’s heritage. “One is your 
teacher,” said Jesus, “‘ and all ye are brethren.” * 


1 Matt. 23: 8. 


Spiritual Democracy [45] 


There can be within its confines no oppressive 
conclave to force adherence to its despotic behests. 
“There is no conceivable justification,’ says 
Doctor Mullins, “for lodging ecclesiastical au- 
thority in the hands of an infallible pope or a 
bench of bishops. Democracy in church govern- 
ment is an inevitable corollary of the general doc- 
trine of the soul’s competency in religion.” * 
There is an organization, but it has no authority 
save for its own preservation. It may exclude 
from its body, but it has no power beyond. No 
rack or prison or any form of compulsion belongs 
to it, as has been so often claimed to the infinite 
sorrow of myriads of human lives. There are 
officers, to be sure, but they are prim inter pares. 
They are elevated because of service. There is 
no promotion for them but through ministry. 
They have authority, but only that which all have 
who possess that which shall benefit others. It 
has a creed, as all associations must have in some 
form that would hold together, but one may differ 
therefrom without forfeiting his membership or 
justly incurring the censure of his brethren. 
There is no supremacy that does not embrace the 
equality of all, and there is no authority that 


1“ Axioms of Religion,” p. 55. 


[46] Baptist Principles 


does not scrupulously conserve the rights of each. 

Baptists have always tenaciously and consist- 
ently held to the views thus briefly set forth. 
They have held to them too, when to hold thus has 
meant the whip or the prison or even the stake. 
The church to them has always been a spiritual 
body. No rite or external act or sacerdotal in- 
cantation has with them been permitted to take 
the place of personal faith in Jesus Christ. “ Dost 
thou believe?” has ever been their question to 
those seeking admission to the church. If the 
answer has been in the affirmative, then the door 
has opened. If the reply has been No, then despite 
position and influence or what not, if the right 
has been maintained, the way has been barred. 

As to the Baptists the church has been ever 
spiritual, so has it always been a democracy. No 
ecclesiastic, whether high or low, whether Angli- 
can or Roman; no organized body, whether 
called presbytery, or assembly, or conference, or 
council has ever been permitted by Baptists to 
usurp authority over them. Says Dr. A. H. 
Strong on this point: “ While Christ is sole King, 
the government of the church so far as regards 
the interpretation and execution of his will, is an 
absolute democracy in which the whole body of 


Spiritual Democracy [47] 


members is entrusted with the duty and responsi- 
bility of carrying out the laws of Christ as ex- 
pressed in his word.” * 

There is therefore no idea among them of a 
“world Church,” governed by one central head, 
such as is held at Rome. There is no thought of 
a national Church as exists in England, with the 
primate and the sovereign in control. There is 
among them nothing approaching the associated 
body affiliated for legislation as well as for coun- 
sel, as among the Presbyterians and Methodists. 
There is not among them even the authoritative 
council as among the Congregationalists, the 
Christian body of all their brethren most nearly 
akin to them in polity. Among Baptists the local 
church is the final court of appeal. That organ- 
izes, that ordains, that institutes. It is correct 
therefore to say Baptist churches and not the 
Baptist Church. There are thousands of these, but 
all together they do not constitute that. And yet 
there is no lack of associated effort. There are 
the Association, the Convention, the Society. 
And now for more complete unity of action for 
Baptists in this country at the North, for more 
concentrated aggressiveness in redemptive effort, 


1“ Qutlines of Theology,” p. 238. 


[48] Baptist Principles 


there has been organized the Northern Baptist 
Convention, corresponding to the Southern. But 
no one of these Associations or Conventions, 
whether State or national, is legislative. That 
would destroy the essential democracy of the 
church and kingdom of Christ, of which Baptists 
have been the persistent advocates and exponents. 
But with it all Baptists have been held together. 
Perhaps there is no ecclesiastical unity more reg- 
nant than theirs. Without any tribunal of last 
resort, they have been remarkably free from any 
serious ecclesiastical cleavage. Without any one 
save their Lord to bid them go, they have not been 
disobedient to the Great Commission. Without 
any conclave to formulate their creeds or institute 
trials for heresy, they have held together in the 
essentials of doctrine. Without any rod of any 
sort over them to compel them to do, they have 
not been unmindful of the claims of those who 
have needed help. Moreover, their unity has been 
not so much that of the grains in a pile of sand, as 
that of the leaf and twig and branch of the living 
tree, animated by a common life and a common 
love. And so held together by no external bond, 
but by the force of a common internal spirit, Bap- 
tists are as the world sees them at this day. 


v 


The Ordinances of the Church 
and Their Spmbolism 


In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: 
_ here, therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, 
comes a double significance. And if both the speech be 
itself high and the silence fit and noble, how expressive will 
their union be! Thus in many a painted Device or simple 
Seal-emblem, the commonest truth stands out to us pro- 
claimed with quite new emphasis. 


It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or 
unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages 
moreover are accounted the noblest which can the best 
recognize symbolical worth and prize it highest. For is not 
a Symbol to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or 
clearer revelation of the godlike? 


—Carlyle, “ Sartor Resartus,’ pp. 151, 153. 


Vv 


Za falS is well known, there are certain ordi- 
4) nances in the church of Jesus Christ, 


whose organization in the preceding 
chapter we have been considering. It may be 
well at the outset to define an ordinance. If we 
turn to the “ Century Dictionary ” we find it given 
as follows: “A religious ceremony, rite, or prac- 
tice established by authority.” In the Roman 
Catholic Church there are held to be seven ordi- 
nances. Baptists regard the ordinances as being; 
two only, namely, baptism and the Lord’s Supper.| 
The place of these ordinances is fixed in the or- 
ganization of the church by Him whose authority 
gave them. Baptism is at the beginning of the 
Christian profession; the Lord’s Supper at its 
conclusion, and to be perpetuated throughout the 
entire life of the disciple. The one is initiatory, 
the other commemorative. The one is intended 
to express allegiance to Jesus Christ, and the 
other is designed continually to show a participa- 
tion in him. Both are intended to set forth thus 
51 


[52] Baptist Principles 


the soul’s individual relationship to Jesus Christ. 
When, for any reason, they fail in this they fail in 
their mission and hinder rather than help. When 
from undue emphasis, when from ecclesiastical 
pageantry, when from unwholesome church disci- 
pline they are made to obscure or belittle or muti- 
late the Christ, they pervert their mission and 
were better dismissed than retained. They are to 
disclose Christ, not to hide him. 

But what are these ordinances, baptism and the 
Lord’s Supper? There are different forms in ex- 
istence, and the inquirer may well ask what form 
is authoritative. By baptism the consistent Bap- 
tist understands immersion alone. The word in 
the original means immersion, and that only. For 
example, to give just one or two on a topic so fa- 
miliar, Liddell and Scott give the following defini- 
tion: “ To dip in or under water”; and Thayer, 
in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testa- 
ment, says, “ An immersion in water performed 
as a sign of the removal of sin.” Illustrations of 
this sort as to the meaning of the word might be 
indefinitely multiplied, but the ground has been so 
often and thoroughly covered that these are need- 
less. Suffice it to say that the Greek scholarship 
of the day acknowledges immersion to be the 


The Ordinances [53] 


primitive meaning of the Greek term Bdzreopa. In 
so far, at least, Baptists have won their conflict. 

The exegesis of the passages in which the word 
in the original Scriptures is found, likewise re- 
quires the meaning of immersion to be attached 
thereto. The symbolism of the term is no less ex- 
acting as to its significance. To mention one in- 
stance of this will be sufficient, namely, Rom. 6 : 
4, “ Therefore we are buried with him by baptism 
into death, that like as Christ was raised up from 
the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we 
also should walk in newness of life.” Nothing 
but immersion will satisfy the terms used by the 
apostle in this declaration. The example of the 
primitive church for more than three centuries em- 
phasizes the meaning attached to the word by 
lexicography and exegesis. No other method was 
known for the time indicated, and it was more 
than twelve centuries before immersion was en- 
tirely abandoned by the Western ritualistic 
churches. Even now it is practised by the Greek 
Church. 

In regard to the Lord’s Supper, Baptists have 
always held it to be commemorative, and com- 
memorative only. They repudiate with emphasis 
the thought of its being, as the Romanist thinks, 


[54] Baptist Principles 


in any way a sacrifice. It is nota mass. Itisa 
feast of remembrance. There is neither transub- 
stantiation nor consubstantiation in the thought 
of Baptists with reference to the Lord’s Supper. 
“This do in remembrance of me,” Jesus said, 
and as a rite of remembrance they have always 
observed it. 

The symbolism attaching itself to these forms 
renders absolutely necessary their preservation as 
originally given. The symbolism of baptism, for 
example, is the burial of the old and a resurrec- 
tion to the new, as well as the setting forth of the 
burial of Christ and his arising. The symbolism 
of the Supper is that of partaking of Christ’s life; 
the bread symbolizing his broken body, and the 
wine the flowing forth into the heart of Christ’s 
own life. Change the form and the symbolism is 
lost. No burial can be indicated without an im- 
mersion. No participation in Christ’s life can be 
fully set forth without full participation in the ele- 
ments that represent him. Dr. W. C. Wilkinson 
in his “ Baptist Principle” speaks of this as fol- 
lows, with special reference to baptism: “ In con- 
clusion we may say that there is no symbolic im- 
port of baptism suggested in Scripture which does 
not require, in order to satisfy it, that baptism 


The Ordinances [55] 


should be immersion. Baptism symbolizes the 
Saviour’s death and his resurrection; it symbol- 
izes the believer’s death to sin and his resurrec- 
tion to righteousness ; it apparently symbolizes the 
mystery of the new birth or regeneration; it sym- 
bolizes the fact of the believer’s union and identi- 
fication with Christ; it symbolizes the fact of the 
believer’s incorporation into one body with his 
brethren; it symbolizes the idea of the believer’s 
purification from sin.” * It can be seen at once, 
therefore, that to change the form absolutely de- 
stroys the symbolism, as the breaking of a vessel 
will destroy the contents it holds. What is true 
of baptism is likewise true of the Supper. Both 
form and substance are needful for the complete 
manifestation of the teaching of Christ with re- 
spect thereto. 

Constant in their adherence to the preservation 
of form in both baptism and the Supper, Baptists 
have been the same likewise with reference to the 
qualifications for these rites. Always and every- 
where they have demanded that faith shall pre- 
cede baptism. This consequently determines and 
always has determined the subjects of baptism. 
Infant baptism at once is barred, since in connec- 


1“ The Baptist Principle,” pp. 164, 165. 


[56] Baptist Principles 


tion with infant baptism there can be no faith on 
the part of the subject himself. The position thus 
assigned to baptism disproves at once the charge 
that is sometimes made against Baptists that they 
regard this rite as a saving ordinance. It is not 
in any wise saving, although obedience is always 
safe, but it is a sign. Persons are not saved by 
being baptized, but they are when obedient bap- 
tized, because they are saved. The order too, of 
these ordinances has always been clear in Baptist 
thought. Baptism precedes the Supper, as en- 
gagement precedes the marriage contract. Bap- 
tism is the sign of faith, and the Supper is its seal. 
There must be a preparation on the part of those 
who would be benefited in any school of life. To 
discern the lessons of nature, one must have a 
capacity within. The same is true of art or music. 
Unless there is some artistic or musical fitness in 
the subject, nothing will be carried away from art 
gallery or concert room. So in the participation 
in the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, there must 
be this preparation of heart that faith alone can 
give. Otherwise eyes will be blind and the spirit 
will be inert. This faith as indicated has given 
sign of its existence in the baptism whereby its 
profession has been made; hence the order of the 


The Ordinances [57] 


two ordinances in Baptist polity has not been 
arbitrary. It is logical, and as necessary as that 
the oath of allegiance in army or navy should fol- 
low the act of enlistment. 

Baptists have always been strenuous in regard 
to the preservation of these forms, as they believe 
them to be laid down in the Scriptures. Tenacity 
at this point is not really their most distinguishing 
feature, although it is from the preservation of 
the form of baptism that they derive their name. 
Other things in their distinguishing characteris- 
tics are more important than their stand as to 
baptism, perhaps. Certainly their practice of abso- 
lute obedience to Jesus Christ is more important, 
since from that comes their attitude with reference 
to the ordinances as given; but it is very much that 
it can be said of Baptists, they have preserved the 
forms of the New Testament as they are ex- 
pressed therein. Had it not been for them, im- 
mersion would have disappeared from the usages 
of the church of Jesus Christ. Had it not been for 
them, the order in which the two ordinances were 
intended to be observed would likewise have been 
subverted. True, a change has come in the 
methods of Baptist administration. They no 
longer regard themselves as its custodians to drive 


[58] Baptist Principles 


from the table any of the other Faiths. They re- 
gard it now more as a matter of individual con- 
viction, and the determination of action is left 
to each one for himself and herself. And yet 
Baptists to-day, no less than in the olden time, as 
a whole, are concerned to preserve the ordinances 
of the church as Jesus Christ gave them. 


Ui 


Obedience to Fesus Christ, the 
Test of Discipleship 


Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and 
sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to 
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat 


of rams. —I Samuel 15: 22. 


Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which 
I say? —Luke 6: 46. 


VI 


aa N the development of our thought con- 
@| cerning the kingdom and the church of 
fire) our Lord, we have seen that Baptists 
Pe to EY direct relationship of the individual 
believer to God, and to Jesus Christ as his repre- 
sentative. He is Head and Lord. The church is 
a democracy, and yet there is no monarchy so ab- 
solute as is it. The reason for this is that the 
members of this church have been drawn to him 
by the force of love, and hence if they are true, 
his slightest wish or most trivial command is im- 


perative. Others profess this obedience, but they 
are not consistent therein. The Romanist, for ex- 
ample, may say that he obeys Christ, but he inter- 
poses the Church, the pope, between his Lord and 
himself. History discloses how the indirect au- 
thority diminishes and really destroys that which 
should be direct. We learn from it what sorrows 
have been occasioned, and what dimness of vi- 
sion and loss of direction. In the recent “ Life of 
Cardinal Newman,” by Prof. Charles Sarolea, 
61 


[62] Baptist Principles 


these words are found respecting this great church 

leader: “ Twenty years he had to submit to a 
policy which in his heart he disapproved of.” * 
This man, deservedly called “ great,’ professed 
allegiance to Jesus Christ, but he gave it to his 
system and its head, the pope. An ecclesiastical 
system came between him and his Lord, as it 
comes between Christ and all those who follow in 
the cardinal’s footsteps. The Modernists, so 
called of the present day, are experiencing the 
same sort of interposition of an ecclesiastical for 
a divine authority. Chairs of theology are va- 
cated, and pulpits are silenced, because their oc- 
cupants dare to be obedient to the Head of the 
church rather than to the one who professes so 
to be. 

Others than adherents of Rome fail in precisely 
the same way. They likewise profess absolute 
obedience to Jesus Christ, and yet their systems 
come between them and him. In all the heresy 
trials of the past few years, recourse for proof 
against the accused has been had to tradition 
rather than to Scripture; to the creeds of the 
church rather than to the teachings of Christ. 
Jesus Christ has not been to their authors as he 


1“ Cardinal Newman,” p. 78. 


Test of Disciplesbip 6S 


should be to the church, their Head. These fail, 
although oftentimes unconscious of their failure, 
to meet the supreme test of discipleship, namely, 
obedience to Jesus. 

Baptists, though at times inconsistent it may 
have been in conduct, have been true to this test 
in thought. From Jesus Christ have come to 
them the commands they have sought to obey. No 
other authority has been recognized ; decrees from 
no other source have received approval from them. 
This is true to-day; this has been true, it may be 
said to their honor, from the beginning of their 
history. In the “ Baptist Confession of the Seven 
Congregations,’ published in London in 1643, 
these words are found: “ Concerning the worship 
of God there is but one Lawgiver which is able 
to save and destroy, which is Jesus Christ, who 
hath given laws and rules sufficient in his word for 
his worship; and for any one to make more were 
to charge Christ with want of wisdom or faithful- 
ness or both in not making laws enough or not 
good enough for his house; surely it is our wis- 
dom, duty, and privilege to observe Christ’s laws 
only.”’* How much woe and shame, and even 
of crime, the world would have been saved had 


1 Moss, ‘‘ What Baptists Stand For,” p. 13. 


£64] Baptist Principles 


the church as a whole been as true to the headship 
of Christ as these words from that ancient Article 
of Faith prescribe! These Baptists had recourse, 
even as Baptists to-day seek to have recourse, 
to Him. When he speaks, they listen. When 
others interpose between them and him, as a rule, 
when consistent, they have been deaf. 
Obedience in this direction Baptists have felt to 
be, and feel to be, the supreme test of discipleship. 


Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine, 


they sing, and in accordance therewith they strive 
to act. They emphasize this obedience because it 
is one of the ways in which they may express their 
love. Can we love where we fail to render obe- 
dience? “If ye love me,” Jesus said, “ keep my 
commandments.” The parent may well distrust 
the love of his child when he says, “ Father, 
mother, I love you,” and then the next moment 
deliberately disobeys a command that is given.. 
The king could not well trust the expressed love 
of a subject if that subject immediately after pro- 
fessing it were found in rebellion against the 
king’s will. Precisely as these could not trust the 
love of the ones thus declaring it, so Christ cannot. 


Test of Disciplesbip [65] 


“Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things which I say?”’ 

Obedience is needed likewise to preserve the 
command that is given. It is sometimes said that 
it does not matter so much as to exact obedience, 
if obedience in the main is rendered. We wonder 
whether a homely illustration will make plain the 
absurdity of this. A man is sent into the woods 
to cut timber for rails, with a direction to make 
each length fourteen feet. In disobedience of the 
exact prescription he makes some twelve, some 
fourteen, some sixteen, etc. “It makes no dif- 
ference,” he says, ‘‘ I am obedient on the whole.” 
It may make no difference to him, but it will make 
a difference when the man comes to build his 
fence. Soldiers on a march are bidden not to 
talk, but some one, near the enemy’s camp, gives 
a shout. He obeys on the one hand, but disobeys 
on the other, and it will be found to have made 
a difference when the camp of the enemy is 
aroused to repel the attack. So, likewise, it makes 
a difference with reference to the commands of 
Christ, whether exact obedience—obedience as to 
details, is rendered. 

But then, again, sometimes it is said if the es- 


sence is preserved, no matter about the form. 
E 


[66] Baptist Principles 


Here likewise is a fallacy that an illustration may 
at once disprove. Dr. George Dana Boardman, 
many years ago, in preaching a sermon on the 
symbolism of baptism* pictures a graphic scene 
on the battlefield. A company is charging; shot 
and shell plunge about it and riddle the standard 
they are seeking to follow. But they press on as 
that standard rises and falls before them. What 
is it? Only a piece of cloth, but that piece of 
cloth is the flag of their country! “So long,” 
Doctor Boardman says, “as the flag floats over 
his ranks the soldier feels that he has everything 
to fight for. Wrest his flag from him, and he feels 
that all is lost.”” So, likewise, is it with the church 
in reference to the ordinance of baptism, for ex- 
ample, which Jesus Christ has given. “ Substitute 
any other banner for it and you substitute a hu- 
man device for a divine; an heresy for the gospel; 
secessionism for loyalty.” There can be no true 
love and no true loyalty apart from obedience. 
Jesus Christ is to the true disciple Lord and 
Master, and to be obedient to him is the test of 
his fidelity. 


1“ Madison Avenue Lectures,” p. 135. 


vit 


The Hbsolute Severance of 
Church and State 


O glorious days! When Church and State 
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers, 
And on submissive shoulders sat 
Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers. 
No vile “itinerant” then could mar 
The beauty of your tranquil Zion 
But at the peril of the scar 
Of hangman’s whip, and branding-tron. 


What marvel that, in many a mind, 
Those darker deeds of bigot madness, 
Are closely with your own combined, 
Yet less in anger than in sadness? 
What marvel if the people learn 
To claim the right of free opinion? 
What marvel if at times they spurn 
The ancient yoke of your dominion? 


—Whittier, “The Pastoral Letter.” 


VII 


Ppp ROM the very nature of the individual 
g| relationship of the man to God and to 
the kingdom and the church, there can 
be no organization legitimately uniting these with 
the State. The Church and State must, in order 
to be true to this ideal, be distinct and separate. 


They are interrelated, but they are independent. 
The one deals more with the spiritual, the ethical ; 
the other with the material, the earthly. The 
Church then dominates legitimately and prop- 
erly in one realm; the State in another. This fact 
was distinctively indicated by our divine Lord. 
“My kingdom,” he said, “is not of this world,” 
“One is your Lord, even Christ, and all ye are 
brethren.’”” When they brought the denarius or 
penny to him, seeking to entangle him by the ques- 
tion whether or not it was lawful to pay tribute 
to Cesar, he said, “ Whose is this image and su- 
perscription?’’ When they answered, as they 
could not help answering, “ Czsar’s,” then came 
the reply, directly distinguishing between spiritual 
69 


[7°] Baptist Principles 


and temporal allegiance, “ Render therefore unto 
Cesar the things that are Cesar’s; and unto God 
the things that are God’s.”* The very essential 
nature and heart of the kingdom and church of 
Christ are diverse from those of the State. In 
the latter position is sought, authority is exercised, 
greatness is determined by station. In the former 
it is absolutely the reverse. Ye are not to be, 
Jesus said to his disciples in substance, as are the 
Gentiles. They exercise authority the one upon 
the other, and among them their exactors are 
great, but so shall it not be among you. He 
among you who would be greatest shall be your 
minister, and he who would be chief shall be serv- 
ant of all.” 

History tells us very clearly and distinctively 
how and when this idea of separateness began to 
be perverted. In A. D. 325, Constantine, the sole 
emperor of Rome, summoned the magnates of the 
church to meet at Nicea. Ostensibly they were 
called to settle certain questions and doctrines in 
connection with which disputes had arisen. In 
reality it was called that the emperor might secure 
for the service of the empire an influence so domi- 


1 Matt. 22: 21. 
2 Matt. 20: 25-28. 


Church and State C7] 


nant as the church had then become. Constantine 
was far-sighted, and he saw what a power for the 
unity of the empire—which at length was brought 
under his sole sway—the church would be able to 
exert. Most of those in that celebrated council 
failed to discern the real purpose of him who had 
summoned them. There was one, however, more 
clear-visioned, who most distinctly divined the 
emperor’s purpose and forecasted the future. It 
was Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and the 
reputed founder of the party that afterward gave 
the Roman Church so much trouble. Being re- 
proached for remaining day after day in silence 
in the great conclave, while others were taking 
part in the prevailing discussions, at length he 
arose and said: “‘ For me, a poor presbyter of the 
Christian church, to assume the right to deliberate 
upon and prescribe laws for the empire would be 
gross impudence and arrogance. For any human 
authority to usurp the right to make laws control- 
ling the faith of Christ’s church would be as gross3& 
a sacrilege. Was Constantine crucified for you? or 
were ye baptized into his name? Do ye hope for 
salvation by faith in and obedience to him? I was 
not. I have come hither, therefore, in obedience 
to the imperial mandate, and have spoken by the 


[72] Baptist Principles 


emperor’s command. As to the empire, I have no 
authority and no desire to make laws for it; as 
to my Christian faith, no man nor angel hath right 
or power to meddle therewith or to prescribe laws 
for it. It is a thing between my soul and its 
Saviour, whom I have served all my life longin 
spite of imperial laws, and whom I will continue 
to serve no matter what laws may be enacted. 
Brethren, will ye do likewise, or will ye now deny 
the Christ?” * It may, perhaps, be questioned 
whether or not Arius really spoke these words. 
He could not have spoken more truthfully, cer- 
tainly, had he done so; and whether he uttered 
them or not, they accord with the exact conditions 
of the teaching of Christ, and with the position of 
Baptists in the history of the church. 

What evils have sprung from this perversion, 
history does not fail to tell us. Doctor Mullins 
quotes from Mr. Bryce, in his ‘“ American Com- 
monwealth,” as follows: “Half of the wars of 
Europe, half of the internal troubles that have 
vexed European States, from the controversies in 
the Roman empire, of the fifth century, down to 
the ‘ Kulturkampf’ in the German empire, of the 
nineteenth century, have arisen from the rival 


1“ Arius the Libyan,” pp. 328, 329. 


Cburcb and State [73] 


claims of Church and State.”*? Buckle, in his 
“ History of Civilization,” as also quoted by Doc- 
tor Mullins, says: “ During almost one hundred 
and fifty years Europe was afflicted by religious 
wars, religious massacres, and religious persecu- 
tions, not one of which would have arisen if the 
great truth had been recognized that the State has 
no concern with the opinions of men, and no right 
to interfere even in the slightest degree with the 
form of worship which they may choose to 
adopt.” * It would doubtless be unjust to charge 
all the evils from which the church may be re- 
garded as suffering to-day upon its union with the 
State, but certain it is that vastly the larger pro- 
portion of these come therefrom. It is only 
yesterday, as it were, that we read of the suffer- 
ings, the privations, the inconveniences encoun- 
tered by the Dissenters of England in consequence 
of the imposition of a school tax coupled with 
religious instruction. This was sought to be 
imposed by the State upon those who did not, 
and do not, believe therein. Such a condition 
could not exist where the State and the Church 
are absolutely severed, as they ought to be. 


1** Axioms of Religion,” p. 186. 
2Tbid., p. 186. 


[74] Baptist Principles 


Baptists were the pioneers in the severance of 
these two essential institutions. They were the 
first, apparently, to grasp the true principles of 

sp Jesus Christ’s government, and seemingly they 
were the first to endeavor to put those principles 
into practice. Says Dr. E. Y. Mullins, “ The 
Baptists grasped the conception of liberty in its 
full-orbed glory from the beginning. This doc- 
trine, and those related to it, shine in the early 
Baptist Confessions of Faith among contempora- 
neous creeds like a constellation in the clear sky 
seen through a rift in the darkness of the sur- 
rounding clouds. It found its sublimest embodi- 
ment when Roger Williams took it in his hand as 
a precious seed and planted it in the soil of East- 
ern New England, saying, in the words of God’s 
true prophet, ‘Out of this seed shall arise the 
most glorious commonwealth known to human 
history.’”’* Such commonwealth did arise. It 
was glorious in itself, but more glorious in the 
results flowing therefrom. It may be of moment 
for us to quote the exact language of the charter 
which formed the basis of the foundation of 
Rhode Island: “ No person within the said colony 
at any time hereafter shall be in anywise mo- 


1“ Axioms of Religion,” p. 268. 


Cburcb and State [75] 


lested, punished, disquieted, or called in question 
for any differences of opinion in matters of re- 
ligion; but that all and every person and persons 
may from time to time, and at all times hereafter, 
freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own 
judgment and consciences in matters of religious 
concernment.’’* Such sentences strike one even 
at this distance as almost inspired. The singular 
thing about it, likewise, is that Roger Williams 
was not the first to strike this lofty chord in the 
instrument of human freedom. Even the so-called 
Anabaptists themselves, those much maligned peo- 
ple, discerned the same great spiritual truth, and 
put it into a document that would do credit as to 
its breadth of view to the nineteenth or even the 
twentieth century. 

It will be readily seen upon what a high plane 
this conception of the Church and State placed 
the relations of the two in Baptist thought. There 
could be, there can be, no persecution where this 
ideal obtains. With this ideal these words from 
Professor Sarolea are untrue. He says, ‘‘ Wher- 
ever any church is alone in possession of the field, 
and has no rival to dread, that church is ever 
intolerant. There is a guarantee of tolerance only 


1 Curry, “ Establishment and Disestablishment,” p. 48. 


ay 
~f 
f 


[76] Baptist Principles 


in those countries where religious opinions are 
profoundly divided, and where several churches 
are struggling for existence.” * Planted upon the 
Baptist foundation, with the conception of Jesus 
Christ’s rulership and the soul’s responsibility and 
obligation to him alone, any church, whether 
standing by itself or by the side of others, must 
be tolerant; nay more, it must grant liberty to 
others to hold what they believe, equal to that 
which it claims for itself to hold what it believes. 

Baptists have been consistent, and they have 
been influential in shaping legislation and in in- 


‘ fluencing States in regard to this important mat- 


ter. They were Baptists who in the early days 
of the formation of the Federal Constitution in- 
sisted upon guarantees of religious freedom in 
this favored land of ours. That Constitution as 
first formed did not meet with their approval. 
A committee, of which James Manning and Isaac 
Backus were influential members, came to Phila- 
delphia and presented the matter to the Federal 
Congress then in session in that city. Their in- 
fluence prevailed, and the Constitution was so 
amended as to guarantee to the nation, for all 
time, absolute religious freedom. There can be 


1“ Cardinal Newman,” p. 142. 


Cburcb and State [77] 


no structural relationship between the Church and 
the State under our national Constitution. The 
State is to protect the Church; to guard its prop- 
erty, and to maintain its political rights; but it 
is not in anywise to interfere with its services or 
doctrines or principles. It may not dictate to 
the church in any way as to these, and much less 
may it in anywise compel. What a tide of woe, 
what rivers of blood, what agonies of soul that 
have cried to heaven would have been spared had 
this idea, that now is so universal, prevailed 
throughout the church’s history ! 

It may be said in just a word, that this ideal 
of which Baptists were the pioneers, and of which 
they have ever been the adherents, is growing 
to-day. In France, within these recent years, and 
almost months, movements have been made for 
the severance of Church and State looking to- 
ward the relegation of each to its own and proper 
realm. In Italy the same influence is at work, 
and likewise in Spain. Moreover, the influence 
of this religious freedom is great in the direction 
of political freedom. When one enjoys the liberty 
of worshiping God according to the dictates of 
his own conscience, he feels that he, as a part of 
the people, has a right to a voice in the determi- 


[78] Baptist Principles 


nation of his political fortunes and fate. Bap- 
tists may be grateful for the part they have been 
permitted to take in the progress of this great 
idea, and in the position that it has attained. 
Others than Baptists now advocate it and sustain 
it. To such an extent, perhaps, does this obtain, 
that it may be forgotten by some who were the 
original propagators and defenders of the true 
relations of Church and State. No student of 
history, however, can fail to discern this fact, 
that Baptists have been the pioneers in holding 
and defending that principle of the right rela- 
tionship of Church and State which culminates 
in the ideal, a free Church in a free State. 


vant 


Mndividual Freedom Essential 
to Progress — 


Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell, 
That mind and soul according well 

Shall make one music as before, 

But vaster. 


—Tennyson, “In Memoriam,” Prologue. 


Vill 


aay, and regarding the spheres of Church 
and State as separable, while yet related, Baptists 
hold to the individual Christian’s freedom and re- 
sponsibility. According to them the soul, as a 
unit, is answerable to God alone in the ultimate 
analysis. The man himself is competent in all 
religious matters, both for judgment and decision. 
So it comes about that the true Baptist is toler- 
ant of others from the very nature of the case. 
What he claims for himself he accords to them. 
He does not, as it is said the old Puritan did, 
claim freedom for his views and sternly repress 
those opposed thereto. He is tolerant of all. Nay, 
to put it in a stronger form, he grants absolute 
freedom of thought to all. It is each one’s right, 
according to him, to think as he will. There can 
therefore be no heresy trial for him. There can be 


no edict against Modernism for him. He frowns 
F 81 


[82] Baptist Principles 


down any attempt to repress freedom of thought. 
To his own Master alone the man stands or 
falls. This does not mean license, nor does it 
mean invective in anywise against others. It 
means simply individual liberty. Recognizing 
Jesus Christ’s headship alone, his will to him, the 
Baptist, is law. His mind is to be brought into 
willing subjection to him, his Lord, and he pays 
in the last appeal, allegiance to no other. There 
may be those who practically would question the 
accuracy and the emphasis of these statements, 
but to be true to the Baptist ideal, the position in- 
dicated must be held. 

Very early in the history of Baptists this view 
began to obtain. As far back in the pathway of 
the years as 1527, Balthasar Hiibmaier “ con- 
tended that any believer led by the Holy Spirit 
can discern the true sense of Scripture, at least so 
far as all things necessary to salvation are con- 
cerned.”’* Dr. George C. Lorimer says of Bap- 
tists, ‘They believe that man’s primary alle- 
giance, so far as earthly powers are concerned, is 
not to the church, but to himself; to his own rea- 
son and consciousness; to his own dignity and 
destiny.” ? In another part of the same work, 


1“ The Baptists in History,” p. 64. 2 Tbid., p. 60. 


Individual Freedom [83] 


quoting from Dr. Thomas Armitage, Doctor 
Lorimer indorses this sentiment, “ Their (that is 
Baptists’) primary idea is not to build up an ec- 
clesiastical system, but to create high and manly 
Christian character. In other words, it is to 
create in each individual soul and life a legitimate 
independency of all men in matters of faith and 
‘practice Godward.”* It were impossible to state 
too strongly the position Baptists have held in re- 
spect to this matter of individual freedom and re- 
sponsibility. 

This position is justified by the nature of the 
kingdom into which, by spiritual birth, men are 
brought. Dr. George H. Ferris, in a sermon on 
“Faith and Finality,” outlines this kingdom in 
these true and suggestive words: “ What is the 
religion of Christ? It is just a glorious mountain 
view of truth with ranges of divine possibility 
reaching in endless succession that fade in future 
realms of mystery. It realizes itself in any. en- 
vironment from which it takes its form, but these 
forms do not contain it or express it or hold it. 
It is ever freeing itself from them, that it may 
arise to a purer and higher spirituality. It is 
above all things progressive. Its advance is slow, 


1“The Baptists in History,” p. 4. 


[84] Baptist Principles 


silent, ofttimes unconscious; arrested by the 
power of reaction; hindered by the spirit of fear; 
and yet as certain as the seasons, as inevitable as 
the tides.” 

The highest efficiency in the direction of outlin- 
ing this kingdom and molding its forms rests 
upon individual effort. Masses cannot doit. The 
church as a whole will be found incompetent. It 
takes individual effort to look beyond the horizon, 
to dip into the future that is to be. This is true 
in science, it is true in art, it is true along all 
lines. It was Hahnemann, the individual, who 
sought out the specifics in medicine that should 
help mankind, and submitted personally to their 
influence in order that he might speak authorita- 
tively in respect thereto. It is the individual in 
ethical and religious matters, likewise, who is the 
pioneer, who discovers the new truth, and who 
modifies the old. Puritan John Robinson said 
that new truth should break out of the word of 
God in the processes of time. It is the individual 
\who will .discover this truth and not mankind 
in a mass. Not all of Xenophon’s returning ten 
thousand Greeks saw the sea at first. It was the 
foremost rank that discerned it, and they called 
out the joyful news to those who were behind. So 


Individual Freedom [85] 


ever is it the pioneers that receive the first vision 
and give the tidings to the rest. Let the individ- 
ual be cramped or suppressed, and progress is | 
—must be—hindered. He cannot be under des- 
potic tuition in this matter of truth’s investiga- 
tion, and he cannot be subjected to fear therein. 
Milton says in one of his famous pamphlets, 
“ And how can a man teach with authority, which 
is the life of teaching; how can he be a doctor in 
his book, as he ought to be, or else had better be 
silent, when as all he teaches, all he delivers is 
but under the tuition, under the correction of his 
patriarchal licenser to blot or alter what precisely 
accords not with the hidebound humor which he 
calls his judgment!” * When this law of in- 
dividual investigation and progressiveness has 
been disregarded, inertia, stagnation, has inevita- 
bly resulted. History records how true this is in 
the Roman Church in Italy, and in France and 
Spain. It is only when men as individuals have 
broken away from the despotic authority that 
would cripple them that any advance has been 
made. In minor measure this has been true in 
other circles than that of Christian believers. 
True efficiency, as likewise true life, can only re- 


1“ Famous Pamphlets,” ‘‘ Areopagitica,” p. 48. 


[86] Baptist Principles 


sult where each individual is free. It is each twig, 
each leaf, each branch of the vine that contributes 
to the life of the whole, and so is it in the assembly 
of men, whether secular or religious. The life of 
the body as a whole must be generated, and must 
be nourished in the individual man, otherwise 
there will be no growth in the body taken to- 
gether. 

Unfortunately, the church as a whole has too 
often planted itself in the pathway of this individ- 
ual progress. Times have changed, and hence 
despotic and persecuting measures are no longer 
possible. The Inquisition has been destroyed and 
can never be reestablished. And yet the church, 
in its different branches, finds means oftentimes of 
repressing individual effort. The great contest of 
the day in the Roman Catholic Church is the con- 
test against those who therein are called Modern- 
ists, who have imbibed modern thought, and 
would bring the Church somewhat into line with 
the scientific and critical methods of the day. 
That is the contest that is going on in other areas 
of the kingdom of Christ. And while measures 
that are persecuting, as in the olden time, cannot 
be resorted to, there are others that can be em- 
ployed. The innuendo, the resolution of censure, 


Individual Freedom 


the quiet influence that may issue in expulsion 
irom a given position, are still at hand and can 
sometimes be used. History records in words 
that still burn and blister, how men have been per- 
secuted for varying in thought from current posi- 
tions. Galileo was silenced under pressure that 
was as cruel as the grave. Luther would have lost 
his life had he not been protected by the secular 
princes. Wycliffe’s grave was dishonored, and his 
ashes went journeying on the Swift and Avon to 
the sea because of his loyalty to his convictions. 
In later times, and in different fashion, opposition 
has been dealt out to other investigators in the 
realm of advancement. Darwin was labeled an 
infidel, and Herbert Spencer an enemy to the 
cause of truth; and others have been treated in 
similar manner. It seems singular in the light of 
experience, along all lines of advancement, that 
this opposition should obtain, and it is difficult 
from any point of view to find words for its legiti- 
mate defense. Society has ever been_ prone to 
honor its historians and stone its prophets. It has 
not been wrong in that, but it has been eternally 
wrong in this; for its prophets have made the his- 
tory its historians have written. “ Pioneers are 
usually martyrs,” is a headline appearing recently 


[88] Baptist Principles 


in a daily journal, and is an expression of the 
same thought. The words are used in connection 
with the daring aerial flights that marked the year 
1908. This martyrdom, however, is caused by 
the laws of nature, and is perhaps inevitable. 
That, on the other hand, which comes so often to 
pioneers in the realm of thought is not inevitable. 
It is due to the opposition of narrow bigotry, or 
the misconception of duty, and could not be were 
the minds of the many widened as are the minds 
of the few, and the right of every man to think 
his own thought recognized and acknowledged. 
But there is danger in such independence of 
thought. Yes, there is always danger where 
there is freedom. Danger attends the man when 
he begins to think, as it does the child when he 
commences to walk. But we do not, or should 
not, veto the efforts of either because of this. 
When the prisoner long inured to the dungeon 
comes into the light, he is blinded by the glare 
and profusion of color. But we do not, therefore, 
thrust him back into captivity. We give him time 
that he may become adjusted. We give the 
thinker time likewise, and he too may learn ad- 
justment, and mayhap may grow more modest. 
He should be this. He is not the first to plunge 


Wndivioual Freedom [89] 


into the ocean of thought, as he is not the only 
one who has reached right conclusions. There 
were great men before Agamemnon. Not all that 
is old is either ill-founded or untrue; but, never- 
theless, the man, if he will, must be free to break 
a lance against it. It is far better that he prove 
himself wrong, than that he be suppressed; and 
he may be right. At any rate, it is in the line of 
his heritage that he shall have the chance to try 
whether he is or not. 

This is entirely in accord with true Baptist 
thought, and to the positions that in the main 
Baptists have held throughout their entire career. 
Any pressure intended to stultify or to repress, 
any effort to crucify the truth or the truth-holder, 
that is still within the reach of the one willing to 
employ such means, any real unfriendliness, even, 
that should seek to hinder or to block individual 
progress in the truth is un-Baptistic. Our divine 
Lord in answer to Peter as to what should be the 
destiny of his brother John, answered, “ What is 
that to thee? Follow thou me.” In the spirit of 
this injunction Baptists say, What is it to thee 
what the other man holds as to essential truth; 
look to yourself and care for that. This does not 
mean a lack of interest in what others may think, 


[90] Baptist Principles 


or what they may express, but it does mean the 
according of absolute freedom to each one to 
think and to speak as he will. “ Thou must be 
free thyself, wouldst thou be free to teach the 
truth.” 

But some one says, Is there not an opposite 
side to this? Are there not vested interests and 
cherished positions and revered standards and 
hoary traditions that ought to be cherished, and 
against which no organized opposition should ob- 
tain? We may reply that there is this side, and 
they who differ from these ought well to consider 
their ground. In the words of Dr. John Watson, 
substantially, as he expresses himself in his “ Cure 
of Souls,” the man who differs from others on 
those points that they regard as essential, should 
have consideration and kindliness and tact. He 
should not belittle their adherence nor denounce 
their seeming lack of enterprise. This unques- 
tionably is true, but at the same time the man 
should not refrain from thinking his own thought 
and uttering it on fitting occasion. And, after 
all, are we afraid of the truth? Shall we by our 
anxiety betray any fear as to its ultimate triumph? 
Shall we fancy that the ark of the covenant can- 
not stand the jolting of the roadway without our 


Individual Freedom [91] 


sustaining hand? In other words, shall we give 
our enemies the chance to say, “ They are afraid; 
their positions are not secure; and so they depre- 
cate and sometimes denounce all opposing forces.”’ 
Surely this is not wise, and most surely it is not 
in accord with those advocates of the truth in 
all ages, who are clear-visioned as well as loyal. 

But, says another, there can be no organization 
with such attitude and liberty for individual 
thought as you would permit. Organization 
would be an aggregation of individuals such as is 
formed by particles in a gravel heap, without 
unity, and with little cohesion. In answer let it be 
remembered that in what we have already said we 
have been outlining certain common elements sup- 
posed to be accepted, in the main, by such as 
would come together on the Baptist foundation. 
It is with these that we are especially concerned. 
With the common ground of the soul’s relation- 
ship to God, with faith as the key to the kingdom, 
with the supreme headship of Jesus Christ, and 
with common church ordinances and organiza- 
tion, they have that which binds them together. 
Any holding these, though perhaps here and there 
in differing forms, have common ground and the 
basis of unitedness. To any one asking for ad-~ 


[92] Baptist Principles 


mission not holding any or few of these, the an- 
swer might well be made, “ You are not of us, 
why ask for union with us?” If then it is replied, 
“ This is forming a test adverse to free thought,” 
we respond “ No. It is simply making provision 
for a basis of union without which there can be 
no organization at all.” In the kingdom, which is 
an attitude and spiritual condition, there is no 
need of such test as this. In the church, however, 
which is and must be to a certain extent definite 
and formal, there is this need, and the demand to 
satisfy it must be respected. 


WE 


Love, not Law, the Binding Factor 


The wise men ask, What language did Christ speak? 
They cavil, argue, search, and little prove. 

O sages, leave your Syriac and your Greek, 

Each heart contains the knowledge that you seek. 
Christ spoke the universal language—love. 


—Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 


IX 


rie E have thus far seen in our discussion 
of Baptist principles that, in connection 


a) therewith, the controlling power is not 
in anything external. It is not in law as expressed 
by any earthly authority. It is not in any creed © 
formulated by human hands. It is not in any 
decree issued by any ecclesiastical assembly. It 
is not in any church conclave, however high in au- 
thority it may deem itself, or however wide may 
be its representation. There must be, however, and 
there is, some bond binding Baptists together. 
It is, as we have tried to point out, the divine com- 
mandment, and the love of the heart which binds 
the disciple to it and to Him. This love, to the 
true Baptist, that is to one who aims to be su- 
premely the disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, 
is the supreme controlling, governing force. 

In support of his position that it is love and not 
law that is supreme, he goes back to the teaching 
of Jesus Christ himself. He sees that in that love 
is the keynote. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
95 


[96] Baptist Principles 


God with all thy heart and mind and strength, and 

-K thy neighbor as thyself.” In this commandment, 
according to Christ’s own declaration, is summed 
up all the law and the prophets. Love to God and 
love to man will carry everything else with it in 
the nature of obedience, or consecration, or beauty 
of life. There can be no disobedience to a higher 
power where there is supreme love for that power. 
There can be no injurious influence exerted 
against any one when love obtains. There can 
be no failure to exert a helpful, uplifting line of 
action where love exists. 

How completely this supremacy of love seemed 
to dominate the mind of the Master himself is 
indicated by his parable of the Good Samaritan. 
The man was sorely wounded by the thieves and 
left helpless by the roadside. The priest passed 
by, fearing lest in helping he might impair his 
dignity. The Levite also went to the other side 
lest he might defile his robes. It was the good 
Samaritan, the member of an outcast clan, who 
came along and took the poor fellow lying help- . 
less there, and put him on his beast and carried 
him to the inn and ministered to him. Above 
priestly authority and Levitic position was en- 
throned the Samaritan’s love, and there it abides 


Love, not Law | [97] 


immortal. Recall the scene in Simon’s house 
when the woman of the street came in and bathed 
the Master’s feet with her tears, and dried them 
with her tresses with a love that seemed to redeem 
all the past. Think of that vase of costly oint- 
ment that Mary broke upon the Master’s feet, in 
loving anticipation of the anointing that should be 
needed, when she received the encomium from 
him she loved—that in all the future that which 
she had done should be published as a memorial 
of her because of the love of him which it mani- 
fested. In all of this it stands forth most clearly, 
how supreme and above all other motives and 
emotions is that which love controls. Catching 
the spirit of this, Paul wrote his inimitable thir- 
teenth of First Corinthians. In the language of 
the poet, and with the clear vision of the prophet, 
he compares love with all the other qualities he 
could summon up, and then declares that while 
might abide Faith and Hope, Love was to be 
crowned above them all. We recall likewise how 
John, the beloved apostle, in his inimitable inter- 
pretation of the Master’s teaching glorified this 
quality of love. So completely did it possess him 
that, as tradition tells us, in his last days, when 


borne by loving hands into the assembly of the 
G 


[98] Baptist Principles 


saints at Ephesus, he could utter only few words, 
these were the ones he spoke over and over and 
over again: “ Little children love one another.” 
In all of this we see how supreme a bond this 
quality of love will weave. The poet is well justi- 
fied in declaring: “ He prayeth best who loveth 
most, all things both great and small.” Beyond 
the bond of legal decree or ecclesiastical fiat or 
conclave authority is this, the potency of love. 

This love is twofold. It is the love of God and 
Christ to us on the one side. God so loved that he 
gave, and Jesus Christ so loved that he came. So 
supreme and all-controlling is this on the divine 
side that in defining God the apostle declares that 
he is love. The terms are synonymous; God is 
love and love is God. This is the love of Christ 
that constrains us according to Paul’s thought. 
It sends us into service; it holds us to our posts; 
it thrills every act; it is a love from which Paul, 
in that triumphant eighth chapter of Romans, 
declares nothing can separate us. Nothing in 
heaven or on earth or above the earth or beneath 
it can separate from this love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. 

It is this love thus manifested and thus supreme 
and regnant that generates love in us. “ We love 


Love, not Law [99] 


39 


him because he first loved us,” the apostle ex- 
claimed. It is this love in the home that makes 
it the place of peace and joy and happiness. It is 
this love in the church which preserves the unity 
of the spirit in the bond of peace—a love which 
makes any service light, and any sacrifice a joy. 
It is this love in the school that makes authority 
something to rejoice in; which transfigures tasks 
that otherwise were hard, and helps to smooth a 
pathway that without it were one of obstacles that 
might prove insurmountable. And how this love 
prompts to the gift of self for the happiness and 
helpfulness of others. One of the most unique 
and interesting characters in Ian Maclaren’s 
books, “The Bonnie Brier Bush’ and “ The 
Days of Auld Lang Syne,” is Drumsheugh. The 
readers of these unique stories, which in some re- 
spects are in a class by themselves, will well re- 
call this man. He seemed to live for himself. 
He was close in his bargaining. He was miserly, 
seemingly, as to the employment of his savings. 
But it all comes out at last when he reveals to 
the good old doctor the story of his life. In early 
days he loved Marget Howe. Because of his re- 
tiring nature he never told her, and he lost the 
girl he might otherwise have had to brighten his 


[100] Baptist Principles 


life. She accepted another, but that other proved 
not untrue, but unthrifty. He never could make 
things go, and privation came to his household. 
It was Drumsheugh who flew to the rescue. It 
was his money that educated Marget’s son, and 
his means that lifted the encumbrances from her 
estate. She never dreamed it until at last one 
day fortune brought them together for a little 
while, and she took tea at Drumsheugh’s house. 
Then the secret was revealed, and she exclaimed: 
“ A’ never dreamed o’ this, an’ a’m not worthy o’ 
sic luve, whereof I hev hed much fruit an’ ye hev 
only pain.” 

“Ye’re wrang, Marget, for the joy hes gien 
ower the pain, an’ a’ve hed the greater gain. Luve 
roosed me tae wark an’ fecht, wha micht hae been 
a ne’er-dae-weel. Luve savit me frae greed 0’ 
siller an’ a hard hert. Luve kept me clean in 
thocht an’ deed, for it was ever Marget by nicht 
an’ day. If a’m a man the day, ye did it, though 
ye micht never hae kent it. It’s little a’ did for 
ye, but ye’ve dune a’ thing for me... Mar- 
eet 

What the love of woman could do for this 
man, and has done for many another man, that the 


1“ The Days of Auld Lang Syne,” p. 189. 


Love, not Law [101] 


love of Jesus Christ can do, and vastly more, in 
the Christian heart. It can lift him above tempta- 
tion and obstacle, and glorify sacrifice, and form 
a bond in life and character that can be surpassed 
or even equaled by no other. 

This love then as a supreme bond in the Chris- 
tian and church life the Baptist would exalt. He 
does not much believe in legislation in order to 
~ advance the interests of the kingdom. He would 
rather put love for Jesus Christ and his work 
into the individual heart. He does not seek very 
much for Sunday laws in order to maintain the 
sacredness of that holy day. He would rather 
place the love of the Christ and so of his church 
and work, in the heart of man as the restraining 
and uplifting supreme motive. He would not 
write the name of God in the constitution of 
either the nation or the State. He would rather 
rely upon the love of God in the heart that should 
be the controlling force in the life. If the latter 
is absent, he is inclined to say, the former will 
have little force. He does not even contend 
very strenuously for the reading of the Bible in 
our public schools. As to this, there is diversity 
of opinion, but the feeling on the part of Baptists 
generally, in exact accord with the thought that 


[102] Baptist Principles 


it is the inner spirit and not the external letter 
that should control, inclines them not to contend 
for such reading. Contention over these exer- 
cises might be more injurious, even in success, 
than would be their cessation. Everywhere and 
always they discount righteousness by edict, and 
seek to implant righteousness by love. 

We dream and speak sometimes of the coming 
of the kingdom of our Lord, when holiness shall 
prevail and anything that defiles shall be frowned 
down; when righteousness and peace shall dwell 
in our homes; when contention and division shall 
obtain no more; when the nations shall dwell to- 
gether in unity ; and when the battle standard shall 
not lead armed hosts, nor the throb of the war 
drum be heard summoning them to conflict ; when 
the sanctity of the home life shall be preserved, 
and families shall not be scattered by the influence 
of sin. But how shall this come about? It cannot 
come by legal enactment; it cannot come by any 
coercion, whether applied to the individual or to 
men in the mass; it cannot come by the influence 
of any external act or rite or service. - It can 
come only by the enthronement of this supreme 
love of God and Jesus Christ in the heart of the 
individual man. And this unit man shall be mul- 


Love, not Law [103] 


tiplied one by one, one by one until the single 
man shall become a multitude, and the whole earth 
in process of time shall be filled with his glory. 
It is love then that is supreme, and love that is 
the binding, regnant, dynamic force that shall 
regenerate life. How splendidly in his own so- 
norous, rhetorical fashion Dr. George Dana 
Boardman expresses this: “Love is thus the 
rhythmical keynote, the discretive index, the fun- 
damental principle of the kingdom of God or 
Christian religion. Or, to express myself in 
phraseology suggested by the undulatory theory, 
love is the ethereal medium pervading God’s 
- moral universe, by means of which are propagated 
the motions of his impulses, the heat of his grace, 
the light of his truth, the electricity of his activi- 
ties, the magnetism of his nature, the affinities of 
his character. In brief, love is the very definition 
of Deity himself. . . Love is the greatest thing 
in the world. And. . . in the world to come. 
“T’m apt to think the man 

That could surround the sum of things, and spy 

The heart of God and secrets of his empire, 

Would speak but love; with him the bright result 

Would change the hue of intermediate scenes, 

And make one thing of all theology.” * 


—Anonymous. 
1“ The Kingdom,” pp, 209, 210. 


[104] Baptist Principles 


We think sometimes of and pray for the unity 
of the Christian church. We see her divisions, 
and often her strifes. We behold rivalry, not in- 
frequently, that is dishonoring to the Master, and 
which, by its influence on the world, is injurious 
to the advancement of the interests of his king- 
dom. We wonder at times how these things shall 
be eliminated, and the church become one in the 
spirit of Christ’s own prayer, “ That they may be 
one, even as we are one.” Perhaps it cannot be 
by organic unity in any form. We are sure that 
it cannot be by any ecclesiastical edict. It is just 
as sure that it cannot be by any common creed in 
whatever form it may be wrought out. Likewise, 
it is certain that it cannot be on the foundation of 
the “historic episcopate,” as is sometimes indi- 
cated. It cannot be, in a word, by anything ex- 
ternal. It can only be by the dominance of this 
supreme quality and emotion of which we have 
spoken, namely, love. Where abounds the love 
of God and the love of man, there his kingdom 
will be set up, and it is this kingdom in the su- 
premacy of its dominating emotion, love, for 
which the true Baptist always and ever stands. 


E 


El Redemptive Service the Church’s 
Supreme End 


Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring happy bells across the snow; 
The year is going, let him go; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 


Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land; 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 


—Tennyson, “In Memoriam,’ Canto 


cv. 


xX 


i T a service of worship, not long since, 
41 the writer listened while the minister 


prayed these words, “ Make us true 
to the purpose and end of life.’ There can be no 
question as to the importance to be attached to the 
answering of such a prayer. Surely no life could 
have grander goal than this. But what is this 
purpose and this end toward which all should 
endeavor to direct their lives? It surely is not 
living for self in any of its forms; simply to 
breathe, to consume the fruits of earth, and doze 
away existence. This cannot be the true purpose 
and end of life. It cannot be either the living for 
advancement in any personal direction whatso- 
ever, aside from that which is advancement to- 
ward truth and virtue and nobleness. It cannot 
be seeking after earthly profit or pleasure or posi- 
tion in any of their forms for self alone. The true 
purpose and the end of life must be the espousal of 
that which is best in self, and for the highest good 
of others. 

107 


[108] Baptist Principles 


If this is true in a general sense—and none 
would be inclined to question it, however adverse 
to its ideal their lives may be—it must be pre- 
eminently true of the kingdom and the church of 
Jesus Christ. These are lifted to the plane of the 
ideal life. These should lift up before the people 

the true standard of living. If they do this they 
must show how little they seek after self, and 
how greatly they seek after others’ good; in a 
word, how completely they seek for others’ re- 
demption, namely, to buy back from the low in the 
interests of the high. From the beginning to the 
end of Jesus Christ’s life and ministry this was 
the purpose of it. Hear him as in the synagogue 
at Nazareth, when coming back from his victory 
over the tempter, he lays down the programme 
of his campaign. He is come to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to break the fetters from the cap- 
tives, to give the oil of joy for the ashes of mourn- 
ing, to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim 
the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. Listen to 
him while he declares his mission, “‘ The Son of 
man is come to seek and to save that which is 
lost.”” Stand among his disciples as he sends them 
out, two by two, to go among the people and min- 
ister in his name, declaring to them “ Freely ye 


Redemptive Service [109] 
———— 


have received, freely give.’ With rapt gaze 
behold him on the side of the mount just east of 
the city, when having finished his earthly work, 
having heartened his disciples by his reappear- 
ance among them, he gave them what has been 
regarded ever since as the Great Commission to 
the church, its marching orders: ‘“‘ Go ye into all 
the world-and teach all nations.” That is, go ye 
and be the messengers of redemption to all men 
in all climes and in all times. 

The early church caught and honored this mis- 
sion. They went everywhere preaching redemp- 
tion in the name of Jesus, and endeavoring to 
exemplify the principles of that great errand. 
Peter, Philip, Paul, and the rest all went forth 
proclaiming the uplift of humanity in the name of 
Jesus Christ. Beautiful upon the mountaintops 
were the feet of them who carried the glad ti- 
dings. And the church of to-day, no less than the 
church of the past, must be redemptive if it is at 
all true to the spirit of its charter. It is the re- 
demption of mankind throughout the whole 
sphere of their lives that it must always and every- 
where set before it as the purpose and the end of 
life. How splendidly Henry Drummond in his 
“ Programme of Christianity ” sets this forth: 


[110] Baptist Principles 


“ Anything that prepares the way for a better 
‘Social state is the fit work of the followers of 
Christ. Those who work on the more spiritual 
levels, too much unhonored, the slow toil of multi- 
tudes of unchurched souls who prepare the ma- 
terial or moral environments without which these 
higher labors are in vain. 

“He who joins this society finds himself in a 
large place. The kingdom of God is a society of 
the best men, working for the best ends, accord- 
ing to the best methods. Its membership is a mul- 
titude whom no man can number; its methods are 
as various as human nature; its field is the world. 
It is a commonwealth, yet it honors a King; it 
is a social brotherhood, but it acknowledges the 
Fatherhood of God. Though not a philosophy 
the world turns to it for light ; though not political 
it is the incubator of all great laws. It is more 
human than the State, for it deals with deeper 
needs; more catholic than the church, for it in- 
cludes whom the church rejects. It is a propa- 
ganda, yet it works not by agitation but by ideals. 
It is a religion, yet it holds the worship of God 
to be mainly the service of man. Though not a 
scientific society, its watchword is evolution; 
though not an ethic, it possesses the Sermon on 


Redemptive Service [rrr] 


the Mount. This mysterious society owns no 
wealth but distributes fortunes. It has no minutes, 
for history keeps them; no member’s roll, for no 
one could make it. Its entry money is nothing; 
its subscription, all you have. The society never 
meets and it never adjourns. Its law is one word 
—loyalty ; its gospel one message—love. Verily, 
_ “Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall 
fine if,” ’? * 

Baptists very early in their history regarded 
this mission of redemption as the chief end of 
their existence. There are some who do not think 
it claiming too much when they declare that the 
New Testament churches themselves were Baptist 
churches. Certainly, when we consider the New 
Testament polity and compare it with that of 
Baptists to-day, the former seems to come closer 
to the latter than does any other. But without 
claiming too much in this direction, or that which 
might be regarded as too much, Baptists early in 
their modern history became missionary. They 
believed their organization to be formed, not for 
themselves alone, but for others as well; hence 
they endeavored to carry the good news whereso- 
ever they went. Baptists were doubtless not the 


1 The Programme of Christianity,” pp. 60, 61. 


[112] Baptist Principles 


first, as Professor Vedder in his recent book ad- 
monishes us. He says: 

“ And just here a caution to Baptists: Do not 
be guilty of making the claim that the Baptists 
were the pioneers among modern Christians in 
the world of foreign missions. . . More than fifty 
years before Carey was born, Ziegenbalg, the 
Dane, went to India and began a mission among 
the Tamils, founding Christian schools, gathering 
converts, and translating the Scriptures into 
the vernacular. Forty years before Carey sailed 
for India, Schwartz the Prussian became Ziegen- 
balg’s successor, and carried forward the work. 
Thirty years before Carey’s birth, Moravian mis- 
sionaries set out to preach the gospel among the 
Negroes of St. Thomas, the Indians of the com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Eskimos of 
Greenland.” * 

And yet so insistent were Baptists in this direc- 
tion, both at the beginning and immediately fol- 
lowing, that it may be said they really originated 
modern missions. To quote from Professor Ved- 
der again: 

“So, from the work of Carey, though he was 
not the first of modern missionaries, from the or- 


1“ Christian Epoch-Makers,” pp. 292, 293. 


Redemptive Service [113] 


ganization of the Baptist Missionary Society, 
though it was not the first missionary organiza- 
tion of modern times, dates a conception of the 
duty of Christians so greatly enlarged, an increase 
of missionary activity so vast, that as we properly 
call Columbus the discoverer of America, we may 
with equal propriety call Carey the father of 
modern missions.” * 

This, during all the history of Baptists, has 
been a characteristic of their general activities and 
their public gatherings. Not being ecclesiastical, 
they do not legislate. Having no formal doctrine, 
and no creeds to revise, they have no occasion 
to spend time in trying to bring their standards 
into accord with modern thought. Their meet- 
ings are missionary therefore. They gather to 
hear reports from the home field and the foreign 
field. They come to know what the colporter, and 
the Sunday-school missionary, and the missionary 
on the frontier, and the one who has borne the 
evangel to foreign shores has to report about his 
or her work. They consult as to the progress of 
the kingdom and the church, and seek to know 
what measures may be adopted for their greater 
furtherance. This may possibly be one reason 


1“ Christian Epoch-Makers,” p. 294. 
H 


[214] Baptist Principles 


why their meetings are not so generally reported 
in the daily press as are others. Reports of mis- 
sionary operations do not furnish material for 
startling headlines. Less public than those of 
others, their meetings are of even greater impor- 
tance; for, forever more important is the redemp- 
tion of a soul than the construction of a rubric 
or the revision of a creed. 

Partaking of the nature of their spirit and of 
their polity, the work of Baptists has been volun- 
tary. Each individual has come as he has been 
minded, and each church, likewise, to this work 
of making Christ known to the world. Societies, 
as we well know, have been formed for publica- 
tion, and for home missions, and for foreign mis- 
sion work. These have done noble service in the 
past. They will, it is believed and hoped, do still 
greater service in the future. Co-ordinated in 
the Northern Baptist Convention (as in the South 
in the Southern) there will be greater unity of ef- 
fort, if not greater nobility of aim. It will still 
be voluntary. The independence of the individ- 
ual, and of the church, and of the Association, 
and of the Society will still be regarded. There 
will be no legislation, no compulsion that shall 
influence any of these elements, but there will be, 


Redemptive Service [115] 


as perhaps there has not been, a unity of action 
that will dominate the whole body, and advance 
thereby the interests involved. There will be, 
without having any form of absolute ecclesi- 
astical government, a completer denominational 
control. 

There is no need, perhaps, and yet it may be 
profitable for just a moment to try and get at the 
ground of this redemptive service which we have 
indicated as the purpose and end of the church. 
It is Paul’s principle of indebtedness. “I am 
debtor,”’ he said, “both to the Jew, and to the 
Greek, and to the barbarian.”’ He was debtor, 
not because he had received anything from these, 
but because he had what these needed. Any man 
who lives in the spirit of the truth who has, must 
regard himself as debtor to those who have not. 
He is recreant by just so much to the highest 
standards if he fails. The church of Jesus Christ, 
therefore, is debtor to those who dwell in the 
dark and destitute portions of the earth. It has, 
as we have indicated, its task set it by its divine 
Lord, because it has been so endowed with that 
which he has bestowed. As Doctor Mabie has well 
said : 

“This task is naught less than to take human 


[116] Baptist Principles 


souls stricken and damaged by sin, and to begin 
to transfigure them—to change them from pros- 
trate, sin-cursed, earthly sonship to radiant, glo- 
rified, heavenly sonship, like Christ’s own, ideal- 
ized in that mount. 

“To bring such a salvation to men the Chris- 
tian church not only has the right, but is bound, 
in the appropriate ‘times and seasons,’ to go 
everywhere upon this planet where the Redeemer 
himself would come.” * 

It is only as such indebtedness is recognized, 
and such task performed, that the church con- 
forms to the ideal her Lord has set up for it. 

In the glory of this redemption, the church may 
find a basis for its being. How redemption in 
any direction glorifies the object of it. Holland 
dammed back the North Sea by her far-reaching 
dikes. She pumped out the water that then made 
the land a waste, and then she tilled the ground, 
and gardens grow where the waves before had 
rolled. There is redemption. In the far West, 
in the earlier days of the history of our country, 
there was the great American desert. Sage-brush 
and sand were the occupants of it. But settlers 
began to enter in upon its eastern confines, and 


1“ The Divine Right of Missions,” pp. 110, 111. 


Redemptive Service [117] 


on the western they constructed flumes and pas- 
sages and brought the mountain streams down 
into the arid wastes. And so where there was 
only desolation and emptiness, there are now to 
be found fertile fields and blooming gardens. 
Where was an expanse of desert, now there is an 
expanse of beauty, and there is redemption. The 
grace of God is poured into the life of a man or 
woman, and he or she is redeemed. Every virtue 
becomes enhanced, and every vice rebuked. Into 
homes it comes, into schools it comes, into com- 
munities it comes, this abounding, renovating, up- 
lifting grace of Jesus Christ of which the church 
is the steward, and wherever there is this coming 
there is redemption. In Walter Pater’s “ Marius 
the Epicurean” there is a most eloquent passage 
depicting the coming of A‘sculapius, the god of 
medicine, to this earth of ours. Where he first 
stepped a temple had been reared of marvelous 
architectural beauty. About the cupola these 
words appeared in letters of gold: ‘“ The Son of 
God coming hither has greatly loved this place.” 
Beneath the dome of it there poured forth a foun- 
tain of healing waters. They filled the basin to 
the brim, but never ran over. Drawing from it 
did not diminish it, and refraining from drawing 


[118] Baptist Principles 


did not increase it. Water taken from it and 
carried elsewhere regenerated other waters, and 
poured upon the ground caused other springs to 
arise responsively. The waters were regenerative, 
healing, redemptive. All this is fable, but that 
Jesus Christ has stood upon the earth and re- 
vealed to mankind the fountain of healing waters, 
that are immortal, is a fact. Of these healing 
waters, perennially flowing forth, the church of 
Jesus Christ is made the custodian and the mis- 
sionary. We are, in the dispensing of this grace, 
to give ourselves as stewards of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Failure here is failure in all. 

It is this church thus constituted, with this 
spirit of obedience to its Lord and Head, and with 
this purpose of redemption with respect to man- 
kind, against which the gates of hades shall not 
prevail. Forms may change, possibly forms may 
be annulled, and yet in some form this church, 
embodying the kingdom and founded by our 
divine Lord, must remain until its mission shall 
have been accomplished, and the kingdoms of the 
world shall have become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of his Christ. It is of this church, in 
large measure at least, of which we have con- 
ceived, as we have depicted the principles of Bap- 


Redemptive Service : [119] 


tists. To hold these principles as the divine Lord 
reveals them, and to be true to the ideals of the 
kingdom and the church as he presented them, is 
the mission of Baptists in the world. To such 
honor have they been called, and for such service 
they need the constant enduement of Him who 
said, “Lo, I am with you alway to the end of the 
days.” They may not resign this task nor prove 
recreant thereto, lest they incur the condemnation 
of Him whose bestowment of praise by and by 
will be their greatest reward. 


Demco 293-5 


8 


